Because they were wrong? Are you serious? Have your read any comprehensive accounts of the Vietnam War? Do you understand how, over time, the place deteriorated into a killing ground for civilians as well as the enemy?
Hey I've seen the "ears." I've talked to men that killed, deliberately, women and children. Our army's brass "encouraged" S. Vietnamese to relocate by freeing up air strikes, artillery and My Lai like episodes that targeted civilian population. We DID torture POWs in order to get information. Hey, that's what happens in a war, you need to just grow up and recognize that we do it and so do they.
Kerry can apologize for the pain his revelations caused and that's fine. The fact is that he never said all of us who served did those things; he simply said they were occurring throughout Vietnam, and he was absolutely correct. Talk to someone that was there in 68-69-70, AND WHO WAS DOING THE ACTUAL FIGHTING. I get tired of these people that were safely tucked in air bases or an ships or in the rear who have so much to say about this. Talk to someone that was getting shot up, seeing their buddies feet sticking out of their ponchos while the heat swelled their dead bodies and walking with their fingers on the triggers on full automatic all day. Ask them how they felt about the "civilians" that were supporting the people that were killing us. Ask them what kind of "rules" they followed.
The thing you folks who get so righteous about Kerry's "atrocities" statements from the 70's never want to talk about is; WERE KERRY'S STATEMENTS ACCURATE? You just don't want to talk about that, do you? You try to nitpick everything he said but the TRUTH is that the picture he portrayed of a war gone wrong and out of control where the war was against the majority of the Vietnamese people, not for them, was absolutely correct.
If you'd been there, if you'd talked to the 5-10% of the soldiers there that were doing the fighting, if you'd seen the hooded, hostile looks on the S. Vietnamese that were supposedly working for us and with us, if you'd seen the looks on the faces of the GIs when they looked back, you'd choke on your words when you say Kerry was wrong.
It was a worthless, corrupt war; it demeaned our country, and it was all a waste of brave, young and patriotic American soldiers. Bush and Cheney were right in refusing to fight there. Kerry was naive to volunteer. I was stupid to go. A pox on those that sent us and a curse on those that can't learn the lessons of Vietnam.
Have you sent a child to Iraq? Have you thought about what you'll say 10 years from now when you're asked what we accomplished in that brutal, Islamically controlled and chaotic nation that justified sending our soldiers to die there?
"It seemed like a good idea when I listened to the rosy estimates of the Wolfowitz neocons" is not an excuse for blind stupidity. |
